When the gambling guys started throwing around millions to get slot machines approved, Broward County Democratic boss Mitch Ceasar showed up.
Chief slot-machine lobbyist Ron Book says Ceasar had his hand out. Ceasar says he was there only to discuss the party's endorsement.
Both agree Ceasar never got any cash from the pro-slots folks.
The way Book tells it, Ceasar asked the pro-slots forces last fall for money in return for the Broward Democratic Party's endorsement for passage of the pro-slots constitutional amendment on the November ballot.
Ceasar offered to put the endorsement on the party's palm cards, those sheets handed to voters as they enter the polls, according to Book.
"Mitch wanted money from my clients for his support. I told him to take a walk," Book says.
The amendment passed without Ceasar's help, allowing next week's referendum on gambling in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
But Book was so upset with Ceasar, he wrote him an angry letter. "His letter was factually inaccurate, like his memory. The letter was beyond offensive," Ceasar says.
Ceasar remembers a discussion with Book about slot machines and about the Democratic Party's endorsement. He insists he never asked for money.
"What would I give them? I can't control the party endorsements. We have a management committee for that," Ceasar says.
Fields' numbers
To say veteran Democratic activist Sam Fields is obsessed with Ceasar's leadership is an understatement. He spent weeks analyzing the 2004 election in an attempt to prove Ceasar's efforts fell short.
The Democrats lost a House seat in Broward and John Kerry got 800 or so fewer votes than Al Gore four years earlier.
Ceasar blames the Democrat's failures on the deaths of condominium voters. Fields calls that bunk.
A Fort Lauderdale lawyer and Broward political player for almost three decades, Fields says more than 77,000 Democrats were added to the voting rolls between 2000 and 2004, more than enough to offset the deaths of condominium residents.
He also analyzed five heavily black voting precincts in Deerfield Beach, Lauderhill, Fort Lauderdale, Hallandale and unincorporated Broward. He says that Democrats increased by 415 in those precincts, but the Democratic turnout dropped there from 67 percent to 63 percent from 2000 to 2004.
"It's clear that the Democrats were out-hustled," Fields says. "That's Mitch's fault."
Ceasar counters: "I don't know what planet Sam is on. He knows the fact that many of our most frequent and most reliable voters passed on."
E-mail ban
There are rules for employees who use the school system's e-mail network, and there are different rules for the Broward Teachers Union.
The union is excluded from Broward School Superintendent Frank Till's ban on the use of the schools' e-mail network for messages about next week's slot-machine referendum.
Till wrote employees in a special e-mail last week that political e-mails about the slot-machine vote are "strictly prohibited. If anybody receives such an e-mail, please forward to Superintendent Till so that an investigation can begin immediately."
The superintendent says he issued his prohibition because the campaigning by school employees using e-mail was "out of control" during the presidential campaign and he didn't want it to begin again for the slot machine referendum.
The same day Till's message was zapped to employees, the Broward Teachers Union sent a mass e-mail message over the school network supporting the slot-machine referendum.
"The union by contract is allowed to communicate with our members," says John Ristow, the teachers union spokesman.
Ristow says that the union can't use the e-mail to endorse candidates, but can comment on issues affecting education.
fighting cancer
They are the political odd couple: U.S. Reps. Clay Shaw and Collin Peterson.
Shaw is a Fort Lauderdale Republican representing a stretch of sun-baked urban South Florida. Peterson is a Democrat whose district is snowy rural western Minnesota.
What brings them together is cancer.
Shaw is a lung cancer survivor. Peterson survived colon cancer.
The two formed the 2015 Caucus to push for a cure for cancer. The 2015 Caucus got its name from the National Institutes of Health's goal of treating cancer as a manageable disease rather than a life-threatening disease by 2015.
Shaw introduced the 2015 Caucus to the House Budget Committee this week.
"One in every three women will be affected by cancer in their lifetime and one in every two men will be affected by cancer in their lifetime. The National Cancer Institutes estimates that more than 570,000 Americans will die from cancer this year -- this equates to 1,500 Americans per day or more than one per minute. We must work together to turn these statistics around," Shaw told the committee.
Shaw says the caucus would fight for an extra $1.5 billion annually added to the National Health Institute's nearly $5 billion. That will do the job, Shaw says. To join the caucus, a House member must have had cancer, be currently fighting the disease or have a close relative who has battled cancer. Unfortunately those membership requirements include a lot of people. Every family I know has been touched with cancer.
That's the point of the caucus and why it is so important, says Shaw.
If the 2015 Caucus is successful, it could be Shaw and Peterson's greatest legacy to the American people and the world.
Campaign notes
Commissioner Steve Gonot of Deerfield Beach is in a tough re-election, and the weekly Deerfield Observer endorsed his opponent, Anita J. Cruz. So when Chief Ron Reffett of the Broward Sheriff's Office saw Gonot take 10 copies of the newspaper, he conducted a one-day investigation. Gonot says he wanted 10 copies of an ad he placed in the newspaper. The deputies searched their law books and decided that since the weekly is given away free, there is no crime in taking 10 copies. But it became a campaign issue for a day … Ad Watch: Sometimes vicious attack ads are accurate. The flyer that Oakland Park candidate Suzanne Boisvenue mailed blasting Commissioner Don Migliore for working for major city developer Scott Brenner is true. Voters will decide whether Migliore's job is the conflict of interest that Boisvenue claims … Stuart Slutsky's campaign for Weston City Commission is phoning voters telling them one of his opponents is non-Jewish. He says it is aimed at opponent Mercedes Henrikkson, who he claims is fooling voters into believing she is Jewish by joining a Jewish organization and putting it on her brochure. She says, "It's sad he stooped to that level."
Buddy Nevins can be reached at bnevins@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4571.